ABSTRACT
Literary scholars have subjected Mikhail Bulgakov’s masterpiece Master i Margarita to an incredible amount of analysis and interpretation, in attempting to solve the profound and complex riddles it contains. One riddle, though, that has received less attention than it deserves is the role of madness. Why does Bulgakov saturate the novel with reference to madness and schizophrenia, both explicit and oblique-not just the setting of Stravinsky’s clinic and the frequent diagnoses and accusations of madness, but also the countless references to heads and skulls, the decapitations, Pilate’s hemicrania, the full moon, numerous tormenting dreams, and so on? How curious that many of the characters-including at least Woland, Yeshua, Bezdomny, Styopa Likhodeev, the Master, Nikanor Ivanovich Bosoi, Andrei Fokich, and even Margarita-are diagnosed or accused of being mad at some point, although the reader knows that they are sane. Why then is the novel saturated with images and leitmotifs of insanity, if there are no truly insane characters? In the following, I will suggest a possible reading according to which there is, to the contrary, one truly schizophrenic character, the emergence and resolution of whose psychological crisis constitutes the foundation and source of the rest of the novel. That character is Ivan Bezdomny.
